Monday, October 21, 2013

ISLAMABAD:
Recently retired Indian Army chief General Vijay Kumar Singh has
admitted that India sponsored bomb blasts in Pakistan and doled out
money to the separatist elements in Balochistan, a disclosure downplayed
by the Indian media so far.

Buying silence of
Kashmiri leaders in Indian held Kashmir and phone tapping inside India
were also part of the sensitive report.The ex-army chief reveals this in
an inquiry report prepared by India’s DG military operations shining
light on activities of an army unit raised after the Mumbai attacks.

VK
Singh last month announced a political alliance with BJP leader
Narendra Modi who was responsible for the massacre of the Muslims in
Indian Gujarat.A portion of the explosive report indicting the former
army chief of terrorist activities inside Pakistan was downplayed by the
Indian media that largely used ‘neighboring country’ as a reference and
instead highlighted its parts relating to his activities of
phone-tapping inside India and buying silence of politicians in
Indian-held Kashmir through loads of cash.

The dirty
tricks sanctioned by the top Indian general were carried out by Tactical
Support Division (TSD), an Indian army unit raised after Mumbai attacks
on the directives of the Defence Minister and National Security Adviser
Shev Shankar Menon in order to “perform a particular task to secure
borders and internal situation in the country.”

TSD
consisted of six officers, five JCOs and 30 men and operated out of an
unmarked two-storeyed building within the Delhi Cantonment dubbed the
‘Butchery’, that was a refurbished slaughterhouse of colonial times, The
India Today reported.

“The division was headed by Colonel
Munishwar Nath Bakshi, a tall, flamboyant intelligence officer in his
early 40s, better known by an unusual nickname, ‘Hunny’,” it said.As the
inquiry body was set up to investigate, Col Bakshi, a confidante of Gen
Singh, got himself admitted in a mental hospital pretending that he was
under serious mental stress.

Former Army Chief VK Singh
allegedly used TSD, a clandestine collective of handpicked military
intelligence personnel, to settle scores on both sides of the
contentious Line of Control (LOC) between Pakistan and India, reported
The India Today, in its October 7 edition.

Between October
and November 2011, India Today reported this month, TSD had claimed
money “to try enrolling the secessionist chief in the province of a
neighbouring country” and “Rs1.27 crore (Indian currency) to prevent
transportation of weapons between neighbouring countries”. In early
2011, TSD claimed an unspecified amount for carrying out “eight
low-intensity bomb blasts in a neighboring country”, according to this
weekly Indian magazine.

The Hindustan Times earlier
reported about the covert operation inside Pakistan by TSD and quoted
its former official stating it was assigned to nab Hafiz Saeed of
Jamaatud Dawah but didn’t mention TSD’s involvement in terrorist
activities in Pakistan as has been revealed through inquiry board.

Since
there was no explicit mention of Pakistan, it didn’t emerge on the
radar of Pakistani media. The News spoke to different journalistic
sources in India privy to details who confirmed that it was about
Pakistan.

India’s Director General of Military Operations
(DGMO) Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia, who headed a Board of Officers’ inquiry
under the direct orders of Gen Bikram Singh, current army chief, to
review the functioning of the TSD submitted the report in March this
year to the Indian government. While report is not being publicised,
however, TSD was closed in December 2012.

An RTI request
filed for the copy of this report was also denied, stating that sharing
this information was prejudicial to national security and can
harmrelations with the neighbouring countries.

“In so far
as your request for supply of order regarding setting up of ‘TSD’ and
enquiry etc, is concerned, it is regretted that the same cannot be
supplied in terms of Section 8 (1) (a) of the RTI Act,” the ministry
said in reply to an RTI query as quoted in an Indian paper.

“The
section bars disclosure of information which would prejudicially affect
the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic,
scientific or economic interests of the state, relation with foreign
state or lead to incitement of an offence,” it further stated.

The
inquiry report on TSD started leaking after former army chief’s
disclosure in a TV interview that the army had “transferred funds to all
ministers in Jammu and Kashmir since 1947”. His comments triggered a
firestorm of indignant counter-allegations all the way from Delhi to
Srinagar. The payouts, he insisted, were not “bribes” or for “political
purpose”, but part of the larger initiative to promote stability in the
insurgency-ridden state.